From: Samuele Pedroni [mailto:pedronis@bluewin.ch]

Can you modify the locals of the surrounding (function) scope in the thunk, or its an anonymous closure with the current nested scopes rules (no rebinding)?

That's a very good point. I can see arguments both ways. And equally, I can see arguments *against* either.

I honestly find that trying to use a single extension to solve very different problems is a bad idea, e.g. currently class is semantically very different from control flow statements, the idea that a single extension can offer extensions for both up to general syntax extensibility seems far stretched.

Again, this is a good point. There are basically two sorts of compound statement in Python, which I could characterise as "defining" statements (class, def), and "control flow" statements (if, while, try, ...) The property() issue is a "defining" problem, whereas the acquire/release issue is a "control flow" one. I think you're right that the two can't be solved sensibly with a single mechanism.

Personally I would find the addition of:

1) [] extendend function syntax to def (and possibly class and 2) 2) a statement that captures and extends what class does now ("my" proposal) 3) a 'with' statement for semantics like those of CL with- macros (Michael Hudson has some ideas on this)

more pythonic.

Sounds reasonable. (1) is useful for staticmethod/classmethod. (2) is useful for properties, and I assume (3) fits in with acquire/release (I'm not completely familiar with what you mean by with-macros, so I'm guessing a bit).

General syntax extensibility is another level of identity crisis for the language <wink>.

Aw, can't we have a completely user-definable syntax, like Perl 6 is going to? Please? Pleeeeease? All the other kids do it! I'm gonna look so uncool!!! Sorry, I was getting frustrated by having nothing to disagree with in your message. I'll go and lie down now :-) Paul.